So, for ages I’ve been wanting to try out enamel bakeware. Why? Because my mum used to use it and I recalled it being about a million times better than non-stick teflon coated crap. Not because it’s wildly non-stick, because it’s not as non-stick as teflon, but because it was easier to clean, way more durable, and frankly looks prettier. Also, my recollection was that even when it gets damaged, it resists rusting better, and you don’t end up with lumps of unstuck teflon in your food.
We’ve used teflon coated bakeware for a while, a mixture of ultra-cheap student stuff that came from the likes of Poundstretcher, slightly nicer supermarket own brand stuff and really quite nice John Lewis kit. All of it, to some extent, has suffered the same fate*, the teflon’s got scratched and then started to peel off, as soon as that’s happened the pans start to rust, and then the whole thing just turns into a general disaster.
I’d been scouring second hand stores and ebay for reasonably priced second hand enamelware without success when my mum mentioned that a local store carried Falcon Enamelware and that she thought it was ‘very reasonably priced’. She then turned up with three baking dishes as a gift. Having had them a while and given them a fair bit of a work out, I think I can safely say that I love them. I am biased in that I wanted to love them, and they’re old-tech (1850s, apparently, is when it first started being reasonably commonly used), but I do indeed love them all the same.
They don’t have to be mollycoddled like teflon; metal spatulas, cutting things in them with knives, anything goes, and when something does stick, a quick soak in the sink will almost invariably have it loose. But to be honest, most stuff doesn’t seem to stick much anyhow. I don’t stress about them going through the dishwasher (nearly all of our teflon pans have come out rusty after a while, the teflon peeling off edges, or water rusting under rolled corners), the enamelware just seems to come out clean. Frankly, they come out cleaner than our teflon stuff ever did.
In fact, in all honesty, I don’t have a bad word to say about them. Hardy, relatively cheap, pretty and easy to use. What’s not to love?
* Although the frying pans have lasted pretty well, actually. As did my unbranded pans from Euroco Discount Stores in Birmingham bought back in 1996. They endured every hardship and were only finally retired this year after a handle broke, and the non-stick finally really did start to give up the ghost fairly thoroughly.
